Tag Archives: flash fiction

Daniil Kharms (1905-42) mainly made a living writing children’s books in Leningrad. He also wrote poems and absurd short stories, often published in underground magazines, after the avant-garde literary societies that Kharms was associated with were banned by the Stalin regime.

In 1931 Kharms was convicted of anti-Soviet activity and spent a year in prison and exile in Kursk. In 1937 his children’s books were confiscated by the authorities, and deprived of his main source of income, Kharms was often on the brink of starvation in the following years. He continued to write short, grotesque stories, which weren’t published, but merely stored in Kharms’ desk drawer.

In August 1941, shortly before the terrible siege of Leningrad, Kharms was arrested a second time, accused of “spreading defeatist propaganda.” During the trial Kharms was declared non compos mentis and was incarcerated in a military prison. In February 1942, while Leningrad was ravaged by famine, Kharms died in prison.

Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a boy, they moved to St. Petersburg, and there he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did something else; and when the Revolution began, he emigrated. Well, to Hell with him. Instead, let me tell about Anna Ignatievna.

But it is not so easy to tell about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know almost nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen off my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to say. So let me instead tell about myself.

I am tall, fairly intelligent; I dress prudently and tastefully; I don’t drink, I don’t bet on horses, but I like ladies. And ladies don’t mind me. They like when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has invited me home several times, and Zinaida Yakovlevna also said that she was always glad to see me. But I was involved in a funny incident with Marina Petrovna, which I would like to tell about. A quite ordinary thing, but rather amusing. Because of me, Marina Petrovna lost all her hair – got bald like a baby’s bottom. It happened like this: Once I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

Blue Notebook No. 2

Once there was a redheaded man without eyes and without ears. He had no hair either, so that he was a redhead was just something they said.

He could not speak, for he had no mouth. He had no nose either.

He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach either, and he had no back, and he had no spine, and no intestines of any kind. He didn’t have anything at all. So it is hard to understand whom we are really talking about.

So it is probably best not to talk about him any more.

The Thing

A mom, a dad, and the maid named Natasha, were sitting at the table, drinking.

The dad was undoubtedly an alcoholic. Furthermore, even the mom looked down on him. But that didn’t prevent the dad from being a good man. He was smiling honestly while rocking in a chair. The maid Natasha had a lace apron and was very extremely shy. The dad was playing with his beard, but maid Natasha was lowering her eyes shyly, showing, in that way, that she was ashamed.

The mom, a tall woman with a big hairdo, spoke with a horse­like voice. Her voice spread around the dining room and echoed back from the yard and other rooms.

After the first drink, everyone was quiet for a moment while they ate a sausage. A moment later, they all started talking again.

Suddenly, completely unexpected, someone knocked at the front door. Neither the dad, nor the mom, nor the maid, Natasha, could guess who was knocking on the front door.

– How strange? – said the dad. – Who could that be?

The mom looked at him with compassion and, even if it was not her turn, poured another glass, chugged it down and said:

– Strange.

The dad did not swear, but also poured a glass, chugged it down and got up from the table.

The dad was a short man. Completely opposite from the mom. The mom was a tall, plump woman with a voice like a horse, and the dad was simply her husband. And above all that, the dad had freckles.

He approached the door in one step and said:

– Who is it?

– Me – said the voice behind the door.

The door opened immediately, and in the room entered a maid, Natasha, all confused and blushing. Like a flower. Like a flower.

The dad sat down.

The mom had another drink.

The maid Natasha, and the other one, the “flower-like” one, got very shy and blushed. The dad looked at them but he did not swear, instead he had another drink and so did the mom.

The dad opened a can of crab paté to get the bad taste out of his mouth. Everyone was happy and they ate until morning. But the mom was quiet and she did not move from the chair. That was very impolite.

When the dad was about to sing a song, something hit the window. The mom jumped up terrified and yelled that she could clearly see someone looking through the window from the street. The others tried to convince the mom that that was impossible, because they were on the third floor and nobody from the street could possibly look through the window, as he would have to be a giant or Goliath.

But the mom would not change her mind. Nothing in the world could convince her that nobody could have been looking through the window.

In order to calm her down, they gave her another drink. The mom chugged it down. The dad also poured a glass and drank it.

Natasha and the maid, the “flower-like” one, were sitting, looking down in confusion.

– I cannot be happy when someone is looking at us through the window – said the mom.

The dad was desperate; he did not know how to calm the mom down. So he went down in the yard and tried to look through the window on the first floor. Of course, that was impossible. But that did not convince the mom. She did not even see that he couldn’t reach the first floor window.

Finally, confused by the situation, the dad ran into the dining room and had two drinks in a row, giving one of them to the mom. The mom had her drink, and said that she was drinking solely because someone was looking at them through the window.

The dad spread his hands.

– Here – he said to the mom, and opened the window.

A man with a dirty coat and a big knife in his hands tried to get in through the window. When the dad noticed him, he closed the window and said:

– There is nobody.

But, the man with a dirty coat was outside looking into the room through the window, and furthermore, he opened the window and got in.

The mom was extremely disturbed by this. She started acting hysterically, and, after she had a drink that the dad gave her and ate a little mushroom, she calmed down.

Soon the dad calmed down, too. Again everybody sat at the table and continued to drink.

The dad took the papers and spent a long time flipping them up and down trying to determine what comes up and what comes down. But no matter how long he tried he couldn’t sort it out so he put the papers aside and had a drink.

– Nice – said the dad – but we’re out of pickles.

The mom made a sound like a horse, which was pretty inappropriate, and made the maids look at the table cloth and laugh silently.

The dad had another drink and suddenly grabbed the mom and put her on the cupboard.

The mom’s gray, big, light hair was shaking, she got red spots all over her face, and, generally speaking, she was pretty upset.

The dad adjusted his trousers and started on a speech.

But at this point a secret hatch opened down on the floor and out from it crawled a monk.

The maids were so confused that one of them started to vomit. Natasha was holding her forehead and tried to hide what was going on.

The monk, the one that got out of the floor, aimed at the dad’s ear and hit him so hard that everybody could hear the bells ringing in the dad’s head!

The dad just sat down without even finishing his speech.

Then the monk approached the mom and with his hand, or leg, somehow from below, he kicked her.

The mom started to scream and cry for help.

Then the monk grabbed both maids by their aprons and, after swinging them through the air, let them hit the wall.

Then, unnoticed, the monk crawled back into the floor and closed the hatch behind him.

For a long time neither the dad, nor the mom, nor the maid Natasha could get their composure again. But later, when they got some fresh air, they had another drink while adjusting their appearance, they sat down at the table, and started to eat salad.

After another drink everyone was talking quietly.

Suddenly the dad got red in the face and started to yell:

– What! What! – the dad was yelling. – You think that I’m anal! You look at me like at a devil! I do not ask for your love! You are the devils!

The mom and the maid Natasha ran out of the room and locked themselves in the kitchen.

– Go away you drunk! Go, you son of a devil! – whispered the mom and the totally confused maid Natasha, behind the door.

And the dad stayed in the dining room until the morning when he took his bag, put on a white hat and quietly went to work.

Andrey Semyonovich

Andrey Semyonovich spat into a cup of water. The water immediately turned black. Andrey Semyonovich screwed up his eyes and looked attentively into the cup. The water was very black. Andrey Semyonovich’s heart began to throb.

At that moment Andrey Semyonovich’s dog woke up. Andrey Semyonovich went over to the window and began ruminating.

Suddenly something big and dark shot past Andrey Semyonovich’s face and flew out of the window. This was Andrey Semyonovich’s dog flying out and it zoomed like a crow on to the roof of the building opposite. Andrey Semyonovich sat down on his haunches and began to howl.

Into the room ran Comrade Popugayev.

– What’s up with you? Are you ill? – asked Comrade Popugayev.

Andrey Semyonovich quieted down and rubbed his eyes with his hands.

Comrade Popugayev took a look into the cup which was standing on the table. – What’s this you’ve poured into here? – he asked Andrey Semyonovich.

– I don’t know – said Andrey Semyonovich.

Popugayev instantly disappeared. The dog flew in through the window again, lay down in its former place and went to sleep.

Andrey Semyonovich went over to the table and took a drink from the cup of blackened water. And Andrey Semyonovich’s soul turned lucid.

A Sonnet

An amazing thing happened to me today, I suddenly forgot what comes first – 7 or 8.

I went to my neigbors and asked them about their opinion on this matter.

Great was their and my amazement, when they suddenly discovered, that they couldn’t recall the counting order. They remembered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, but forgot what comes next.

We all went to a commercial grocery store, the one that’s on the corner of Znamenskaya and Basseinaya streets to consult a cashier on our predicament. The cashier gave us a sad smile, took a small hammer out of her mouth, and moving her nose slightly back and forth, she said:

– In my opinion, a seven comes after an eight, only if an eight comes after a seven.

We thanked the cashier and ran cheerfully out of the store. But there, thinking carefully about the cashier’s words, we got sad again because her words were void of any meaning.

What were we supposed to do? We went to the Summer Garden and started counting trees. But reaching a six in count, we stopped and started arguing: In the opinion of some, a 7 went next; but in the opinion of others an 8 did.

We were arguing for a long time, when by some sheer luck, a child fell off a bench and broke both of his jaws. That distracted us from our argument.

They decided to meet at the Chinese restaurant next door to the bowling alley, because the food there was great, and although the bowling alley hosted a league on Thursday nights and got super crowded, almost no one dined in at the restaurant. Most of the business came from takeout orders, so the four of them could eat and talk in peace.

Jessica and Sathvik showed up at about the same time and requested the booth in the corner by the window. “Let me get that for you,” he said, helping remove her coat. “How’ve you been, Jess?”

“Oh, not bad. I have a thousand different things to do by the end of the week, and I haven’t started on any.”

“Sounds like a typical week, then,” he smiled.

“Yep, pretty much. How are you doing, Sathvik?”

“I’ve got two thousand things to do this week, and I actually have started a few of them.”

“You overachiever,” she scowled.

“Really? You guys want to sit by the window?” A tall guy with a blonde semi-mohawk stood by the front door. “Hello, I’m with them,” he waved to the hostess.

“Stanley, what’s up, broseph?”

“Sathvik. Jessica,” he nodded, tossing his jacket on the window ledge. “Have you guys ordered yet?”

“What’s wrong with by the window?” asked Jessica.

“It just feels so… public.”

“We are in public, restaurants are public places,” said Sathvik. “No, we haven’t ordered yet.”

“Let’s get some fried wontons.”

“Ugh, no thank you. I’m fat enough as it is.”

“You’re not fat, Jess.”

“Yes, I am, Stan.”

“No, you’re not.”

“How about spring rolls? Those are pretty healthy.”

“Okay.”

“Sounds good.” Jessica motioned for the waiter.

“Are you ready to order?”

“We’d like some apps, and drinks,” said Stanley. “Our friend is running a little late. We’ll wait till he shows up to order our entrées. Jess, what do you want to drink?”

“I’ll have wine, please. Red, merlot, or whatever is cheapest.”

“Sathvik?”

“Dr. Pepper, if you have it.”

“What if they only have Pibb?”

“We have Dr. Pepper,” said the waiter. “For you, sir?”

“I’ll have a Tsingtao.”

“What if they only have Sapporo?” asked Jessica.

“Don’t speak,” said Stanley.

Jake arrived as they were arguing over who should get the last spring roll. “Sorry, guys, my mom threw a bunch of work at me, like she does every time I go over there. Hey, is anyone gonna eat that spring roll?”

As soon as they’d ordered their food they started the meeting. Sathvik suggested they each take a few minutes to present their work so far, including a brief summary of their sections, their focus, themes, what they’d written, the tone and perspective of their writing, etc., and after everyone had gotten a chance to talk they could address specific concerns and discuss the big picture of the book in light of what they’d heard.

“My section begins with the last date I had with Laura.”

“The one when—”

“Yes, when she broke up with me.”

“Good call,” said Jessica.

“I tell it like an action piece, put the reader in my shoes, my mind. It’s graduation, we’re launching out into the world, no more school, new jobs, high hopes for the future, and then, bam.”

“Bam.”

“She drops the H-bomb.”

“What’s the H-bomb?” asked Stanley.

“You don’t know what the H-bomb is?”

“The Hydrogen bomb,” said Sathvik. “The most destructive weapon known to man. It’s a metaphor, Stan, she told me she wanted to break up.”

“She broke his heart,” said Jessica.

“She crushed my heart. And that’s how I introduce my life since then. I talk about my work, the shift from college to career, my social life, my perspective on romance and dating, and go through some of the experiences I’ve had since breaking up with Laura.”

“It sounds like a journal,” said Stanley.

“It’s more objective than that.”

“Do you mention specific people?”

“I describe a few of the dates I went on. Where we went, what we discussed, good and bad vibes, how the nights ended. I changed all the names of course.”

“How many women have you dated?”

“Since Laura? Two, one of whom is… ongoing.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Not officially.”

“Does she know about the book?” asked Jake.

“Of course. Alright, who’s next?” He pointed at Jessica.

“Why me?” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I begin with my first kiss.”

“Aww, how sweet.”

“Shut up, Stan. Twelve years-old, my last year at summer camp, spin the bottle with the boys in the pavilion.”

“What was his name?”

“None of your business.”

“Dang, someone’s touchy tonight.”

“Let her talk, Stan,” Jake grumbled.

“Thank you. Start with my first kiss, jump from there to my boyfriends in high school, juxtapose that with the dreams I’d acquired from books, movies, imagination. I’ve only really outlined the piece so far. It’s good, but it’s…”

“Sad.”

“Miserable. Quite fitting in fact, for such is my love life.”

“What about Todd?”

“I’ll reference that as a transitional period, when I realized not all men are evil. It’s a work in progress. I intend to mine a nugget of hope from the dark solitude of my existence. Okay, who’s next?”

“Fair enough,” said Sathvik. “Jake, how about you?”

“Look at that smile,” laughed Jessica.

“Y’all already know what my section’s about.”

“The coolest lady on the planet,” she and Sathvik said in unison.

“Great, so it’s a love letter,” said Stanley.

“It’s about love, it isn’t a love letter.”

“How did you start?”

“With something my dad told me when I was a kid. On the way home from junior high one day, he turned to me when we were stopped at a stoplight, and said, ‘Jacob, a man’s got two jobs to do in this world. Serve the Lord, and love his wife.’ I start with that and go on to talk about Abbie.”

“What do you focus on?” asked Stanley.

“Everything. Her eyes, her hair, her nose, her lips…”

They all laughed.

“Do you talk about race at all?” he asked.

“Here and there.”

“Why is that important?” asked Jessica.

“It’s not,” said Stanley, “but it’s interesting. He’s black, she’s white, it could provide some good material for a book about relationships.”

“I’m not saying he has to, I’m just saying readers might find it interesting. The conflicts, social stigmas, prejudice, stuff like that.”

“I get it,” said Jake. “I considered going that route, but honestly I’d rather make it about Abbie and me, more than about Abbie and me and the world. We’ve been together for three and a half amazing years, and yeah, the race thing has been a factor, but it’s not what we’re about.”

“What are you writing, Stan?” Jake asked as they dug in to their meal.

“Confessions… of the Studliest Stud in Studderton.”

“Sounds delightful,” said Jessica.

“Sounds fictional,” said Sathvik.

“Very funny, Vik. No, I’m actually doing a story about the future. I’m writing about my wife, whoever she is, and how I’d like it to be someday. We wake up in the morning, eat breakfast together, joke and laugh and kiss each other. How marriage is supposed to be, you know, through my eyes.”

The stands were almost all filled at the ballpark. The vivid green seemed to shine amid the thousands of red and white hats and jerseys in the crowd. The only people on the field were the grounds crew and three umpires.

“Do you think we’re going to win today?” asked Lisa.

“I think we’ll win. We’ve got a great team this year,” said Roger. “If we don’t lose heart, we’ll win.”

The day was cloudy and a gentle breeze was moving through the stadium. “Look, even the highest rows are filling up now.”

Roger looked up at the fans shuffling in to find their seats. He turned and asked her, “When you think about heaven, do you think of it as a place, like a giant castle in the sky, or is it more like a feeling, like joy or peace or love?”

Vincent Skybolt, best known for his work as vocalist and front man of the heavy metal group, Death Pandas of Milan, was born Vincent Raymond Kinison on May 15, 1944. His father, Henry John Kinison, an American aircraft engineer, and his mother, Renée Miller-Kinison, a Scottish factory worker-turned-avant-garde painter, met in Tunisia when their flights had intersecting layovers in the capital city of Tunis. Renée accompanied Henry to Indianapolis, where they were married, and the following year young Vincent was born.

The future dark Rock pioneer, considered by some to be the most prodigal musical curiosity of the twentieth century, emerged from the womb with a malformed right ear and jawline, the earlobe stretching to just below the hinge of his jaw and fusing with the soft skin underneath his right mandible. This deformity served as inspiration for his stage name, Vincent Skybolt, since in his early teens he adopted the custom of telling those who asked about his face that he had been struck by lightning when, on a dare, he’d climbed to the top of an electrical tower during a thunderstorm. Severely rattled, he admitted, though not incapacitated, he’d managed to climb back down and avoid further injury.

Much of Vincent’s early life remains unknown. Dropping out of high school his sophomore year, in the Fall of 1960, he took the stage unannounced at his Homecoming dance, overpowering the befuddled doo-wop group, Shooby and The Boppers, with a deafening rendition of one of his earliest original songs, “Pumpkin-Muffie Insane.” Lyrics:Greed will murder your soul,
Greed will drive you insane! Repeat, 3XPumpkin-Muffie your soul,
Pumpkin-Muffie insane! Repeat, 1X Repeat all, 4X

Between then and the release of his band’s self-titled debut, Death Pandas of Milan, nearly fourteen years later, little is known about the specifics of Vincent’s work and life. Rumors persist about him scaling the summit of Everest, barehandedly subduing rogue hippopotami in the jungles of Mozambique, researching snake venom resistance in northern Siberia, and taming homicidal Great Whites in Australia. Prior to the album’s release in 1974 few people had ever heard the name, Vincent Skybolt, and in the years after as well. Death Pandas of Milan sold seventy-one copies in the United States, four hundred and sixty-three copies worldwide, to the disappointment of his bandmates, whom he had met in the course of his travels.

Vincent sings lead vocals and plays rhythm guitar on a majority of the group’s nineteen studio albums recorded between 1974 and his alleged death in 2008. Many of them weren’t released upon completion, and most of the albums have yet to be made available to the public.

To conclude this brief biography, the lyrics of one of Vincent Skybolt’s finest solo compositions, “Deathboat to Snowhere”:Skies on fire, burn so bad, Skies on ice, cold, cold skice! Skies that hunger, oceans of hunger,
Deathboat to snowhere, sink us down…
Repeat, 6X